Mention that
Islamic charities do not contribute to the needs of non-Muslims and
critics will protest. After all, organizations like Islamic Relief
say right there on their website that they "pay no heed to color, race
or creed." It must be true if they say so, right?

Not really.

In fact, let’s use Islamic
Relief as an example, since this mainstream Muslim charity is so
often cited by those skeptical of the claim that such organizations
generally exist to help Muslims. Although the group certainly
appears to be assisting with worthy projects around the world, the
question is whether Islamic Relief is like the Red Cross and other
Western charities which focus only on need. How non-discriminatory
of “creed” is this organization in choosing the people and projects that
will receive its assistance?

As a public charity, Islamic Relief is bound by law to publish a good
bit of financial information each year about its operations. From
the group's
Annual Report from 2007, we can glean rudimentary insight into
who gives to the organization and who generally receives.

The closest that this document comes to reporting which countries
received assistance is in the Restricted Funds section, where the total
resources expended comes to about £37 million. Interestingly, just
over 10% of this is allocated to Qurbani and Ramadhan, two decidedly
Islamic religious practices that certainly don’t involve non-Muslims.
An additional £7 million goes to the rather cryptic category of
“Orphans”. The remaining expenditures (about £26 million) can be
tracked by the country or region in which the resources were spent.

Most of the 27 countries/regions listed on Islamic Relief’s list are
majority Muslim. But the six that are not in this category are even more
telling of where the organization focuses its resources. Three of
these countries have very substantial Muslim minorities - Ethiopia,
India and Sri Lanka – and only the Muslim regions of these countries are
mentioned in the details (Kashmir in India, the Ogaden region of
Ethiopia, and the Kalmunai district in Sri Lanka – the country’s only
majority Muslim municipality).

Only three of the countries listed as recipients of Islamic Relief aid
have a small enough Muslim population in which the identity of the aid
recipients might otherwise be assumed to be non-Muslim by the casual
observer. These are Kenya, China and Malawi.

However, in the case of Kenya, Islamic Relief touts its work among the
Mandera ethnic group, which is Muslim. The two minor projects in
Malawi are focused in the Chikwawa and Nsanje regions, where the Yao
Muslims are concentrated. And in China, a nation that is only 1%
Muslim, Islamic Relief does work in the remote Gansu region, one of the
most heavily Muslim provinces in the country (see photo below).

Obviously it is not a great leap to assume that if Islamic Relief goes
to such lengths to assist only the obscure Muslim populations of
non-Muslim countries, they are probably not terribly interested in the
tiny non-Muslim minorities of, say, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This
is not to say that the organization necessarily checks the ID cards of
those lining up for food to see which god they believe in. But,
against the list of project locales, only the most naïve person could
possibly belief that the charity targets need rather than needy Muslims.

In fact, of all the 37 million pounds expended in 2007, only a miniscule
£247,891 appeared to be devoted toward a non-sectarian relief project.
This one exception was for the victims of flooding in the United Kingdom
(noted as an "Other Country"). This amount not only represents less
than one percent of total expenditures, but it is almost exactly 10
times less than the amount of aid that Islamic Relief devoted to
providing slaughtered animals for Qurbani.

A cynic might also suggest that this “aid” to the UK was more of a
calculated PR stunt, particularly since the British provided Islamic
Relief with over £13 million that year, or about 45% of total revenue.
50-1 is quite a return on investment.

According to the 2007 report, the only real pluralism is found in the
list of donors rather than recipients.

Of the £8.7
million in individual grants received in 2007, the vast majority was
from non-Islamic organizations in the West. Only 20% came from
Islamic groups, almost all of which was specifically designated for
projects assisting Muslims. Amazingly, Christian charities
(including Christian Aid and the Catholic Agency for Overseas
Development) actually accounted for just over 10% of the individual
grants received by Islamic Relief – or nearly half of that donated by
Muslim groups!

These
non-Muslim donations are important because the majority of funds
received by Islamic Relief can be assumed to have come from Muslim
individuals satisfying the obligation of zakat (similar to the
Christian tithe but generally much less - about 2.5% of wealth increase
or income). According to Islamic law, this money is not supposed to
go toward anyone outside the Islamic faith. So how does Islamic
Relief justify the tiny proportion of its relief funds that do assist
non-Muslims?

Simple.
As with all legitimate Muslim charities, the donations that Islamic Relief
receives from non-Muslims exceeds by far the amount of aid spent
on non-Muslims. The organization is simply passing along
non-Muslim aid to non-Muslims (and probably benefiting from the
window-dressing as well, since such a large amount of their funding
comes from non-Muslim donors).

We have no
problem with Muslim charities helping Muslims - at least those that
aren't funneling donations to terrorists, such as the Holy Land
Foundation and
CAIR. However, it is disingenuous for these organizations to
pretend that they don't discriminate by creed when over 99% of their
assistance is clearly targeted toward members of their own faith.

Picture
from Islamic Relief's gallery.
What kufi?
This is just a random Chinese man benefiting from random Islamic
charity.

Further Reading

Since this article was published in 2010, darker allegations about Islamic Relief have been leveled. To quote
from a piece by Joe Kaufmann, published in 2016:

Islamic Relief’s ties to terror are well known. The Russian government has accused Islamic Relief of supporting
terrorism in Chechnya. Israel has banned the group, labeling it a Hamas front and arresting the organization’s Gaza
Program Manager, Ayaz Ali, in 2006, for providing assistance to Hamas. At the end of 2014, Britain’s HSBC bank cut ties
with Islamic Relief over concerns about “terrorist financing.” Reports show that Islamic Relief has sent millions
of dollars to and received tens of thousands of dollars from groups related to al-Qaeda.

Along with ISIS and al-Qaeda, both CAIR and Islamic Relief have been named by the government of
United Arab Emirates (UAE) to its official list of terrorist organizations.

The Chairman of IRUSA is Khaled Lamada. Lamada is also the co-chairman of the Islamic Circle of North America and
Muslim American Society (ICNA-MAS) national convention. ICNA has been linked to terrorist financing and has used
the web to promote a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the Taliban. MAS, like
CAIR and Islamic Relief, has been named to the UAE government’s list of terrorist organizations. Lamada uses his
Facebook page to advocate for such groups as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.